Word: spliced
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2000
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...nature build two such different organisms from what is essentially the same blueprint? No one knows for sure, though scientists are formulating theories. One is that when a gene sets out to make proteins it can splice itself together in alternative ways; another is that some genes in man are left running longer than they are in a mouse--so that our bodies grow bigger, our brain cells more numerous and so on. "It's not as if a new kind of brain cell were invented 150 million years ago [when mice and men diverged]," says Robert Weinberg, a professor...
...years ago, a fish researcher in Newfoundland found that even though his saltwater tank had frozen, the flounder in it survived. Adapted to icy Canadian waters, the fish turned out to have a gene, known in other polar fishes, that produces an anti-freeze protein. While trying to splice this gene into salmon so it too could be grown in colder waters, scientists made a second accidental discovery: they found that while the gene didn't keep the salmon from freezing, a portion of it, when stitched onto a salmon's growth-hormone gene, greatly speeded development--up to five...